I had also been in touch with some friends before we left for the UK, people who I hadn’t seen for sixteen years. When I finished my midwifery training in 1989 I moved from Chelmsford in Essex to Salisbury, mainly to be closer to a group of friends who I had met in Thailand and whom I had kept in touch and visited regularly since I had lived in England. Back then I initially lived with Lesley and Ian before moving into hospital accommodation at Odstock Hospital, where I was working as a staff midwife. I also spent a lot of time with Suzy and Rob. I arranged to have dinner at Lesley and Ian’s place the night we were in Salisbury.
When we all arrived in Salisbury we unloaded in a youth hostel, where we were planning to kip down for the night before going to see Stonehenge early the next day on the way to Cornwall. We had boys dormitories and girls dormitories. Robbie decided he wanted some mummy time and came along with me to visit my friends. We caught a taxi to Quidhampton, the little village just out of Salisbury where Lesley and Ian live with their 15 year old daughter, Emily. The last picture I had seen of Emily was of her christening.
We had a wonderful evening of course, catching up on a précis of each other’s lives in the time that we had available. Ian and Lesley look just the same and apparently I do as well. Emily is stunning.
Robbie helped feed the chooks and found three eggs. We picked raspberries and blackberries from the garden for dessert while Lesley cooked up the most glorious vegetarian meal using veges and herbs from their garden – I had been vegetarian when I knew them last. Lesley is still health visiting and Ian works in IT. They live a life which is deeply connected to their village community and friends in the area. Their house is a charming idiosyncratic very English blend of all of their lives and they look happy.
Rob came around for dessert. Suzy was, unfortunately for me, in Costa Rica visiting another friend Birdie. He and Suzy in the last 15 years have developed their deep love of old rural building from a small building business into a rural building skills training centre with a business arm that builds strawbale houses. They are passionate about sustainable development and have also started up a not-for-profit enterprise building low cost strawbale rural housing.
We had a thoroughly satisfying catch up and chewed the fat about all kinds of interesting things – sustainable development and the oil and gas industry, middle eastern expatriate lifestyle, how living in another culture influences how you think about your own way of life etc etc. When I looked at my watch I was past my curfew at the youth hostel and I had forgotten to get the door combination that would get me in after hours. Oops. I sent a hasty text to Clare the Bear and Robbie and I kipped down in the spare room. 
The next morning Lesley dropped us off at the youth hostel with a big bag of Discovery apples and Comice pears from their garden. The van was packed already and they were just about to come to Quidhampton to find us. Jon had slept in his clothes waiting for Robbie to arrive back in the boys dormitory and Clare had rolled her eyes and gone to sleep when I was late back, knowing that I had a key to get in. In that wonderful way that really old and good friends have with mild inconsiderations they completely overlooked it all and declared that it was no bother at all.
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